Chapter 3
Oh, why had she spoken those preposterous words to Lord St. Alban?
Anyone with eyes could see that, aside from the Duke, he was the most capable man in the room. In all of London, mayhap.
But her reason for speaking so rudely was clear, if only to her. She needed to put distance between herself and this viscount, who had faced this entire gathering and silently dared them to speak a word crosswise against his daughter. She couldn’t help admiring anyone who stood up to these people. It was a most attractive quality, which was the absolute opposite direction her thoughts should be taking.
It wouldn’t do for her to admire any man or find him attractive. That part of her life was over. Her future self would enjoy a different sort of life. One that didn’t involve attractive, admirable viscounts.
She cleared her throat and found the Duke observing her, a speculative cant to his head. “I must bid you all a good night, I’m afraid,” she said. “I have an early morning meeting at the school.”
“Lady Olivia, about that progressive school,” began the Dowager. Olivia sensed the other woman building up to a scold. “Why must you invite even more scan—”
“Of course, my dear,” the Duke cut in, effectively shushing the Dowager.
A determined tilt to her chin, Olivia wouldn’t risk another glance at Lord St. Alban or squirm beneath his steady, serious gaze. It was possible he saw through to her very soul. “Your Grace, this Salon will be declared the crush of the Season.”
They were the exact, correct words to speak to her hostess, which was yet another reason she should stay far away from Lord St. Alban. The correct words tended to perform a disappearing act in his presence.
She turned to make her escape when a pair of green bucks, with no more than forty years between them, rushed forward as if the house was on fire. “Duchess!” they cried in unison.
“Yes? Yes?” The Dowager’s face tensed in alarm. “What is it?”
Flight arrested by this sudden burst of activity, Olivia paused mid-step. His attention was still fixed upon her. She felt its blue ice down to her bones. How she longed to rid her body of its betraying blush.
“Duchess Dallie,” began one of the bucks in a studiously measured tone, “we must have dancing tonight.” The youth had imbibed a touch too much champagne punch.
“Dancing?” The tension in the Dowager’s face released in relief. “My dears, this isn’t a ball.”
“But it is a ballroom, Duchess,” pointed out the other young buck. “A glorious one.”
“Its magnificence is unrivaled by any other in London,” added his cohort.
Olivia suspected the two had been knocking back something a little harder than champagne punch. She risked a quick glance at Lord St. Alban, his serious gaze taking in the frivolous scene. She had a feeling they were all frivolous beings in his eyes.
Yet his close proximity had her body coiled tighter than a piano string, and she suspected all he would need to do was stroke a single key to make her vibrate and sing out . . .
She pressed cooling fingers to burning cheeks and inhaled a fortifying breath. She’d rather he not notice, but if he did, he did. She needed air.
“What sort of bet?” the Dowager inquired, calling Olivia’s attention back to the conversation around her.
The one young buck nudged the other. “To see if a certain lady will dance with Bletham.”
A smile, equal parts delight and mischief, teetered about the corners of the Dowager’s lips. “For a dance, you say?” She glanced at the Duke. “I don’t see why not?”
“A waltz?” one of the bucks pressed, boldness winning the day.
“Well, we’ve come this far, haven’t we?” the Dowager stated more than asked.
Before Olivia could blink, the young bucks and the Dowager rushed away to inform the string quartet of their new duties. The Duke hesitated, his gaze finding Olivia’s and holding it. She nodded once, subtly, decisively, and the Duke strolled away in the Dowager’s wake.
Now, in the midst of an ocean of lords and ladies, she stood alone with Lord St. Alban. She should acknowledge him. After all, he was standing directly in front of her. She possessed enough social acumen to deal with this viscount. He was a mere man, and if she chose, after this night, social protocol allowed that she never had to acknowledge his existence again. Besides, she’d already spoken her good-byes.
Then it happened: the string quartet struck up the opening notes of a waltz, the crowd raised its voice in a unified cheer, and Lord St. Alban held out his hand to her. “May I have the honor of this dance?”
She should say no. She needed to say no.
She couldn’t. Not without inviting more scandal from the odd curious eye that might be observing them. She’d endured enough scandal these last six months to last her a lifetime.
She stepped a hesitant foot forward and held out her hand, willing herself to look up at him. Most extraordinary were Lord St. Alban’s eyes: arctic blue rimmed in navy. They should be frosty, but they weren’t. They burned with the whitest heat of a blue flame.
She’d never entertained the idea that one could be incinerated by a waltz. But when he took her hand and her pulse jumped, she suspected that she would be lucky to escape this dance entirely unsinged.
She steeled herself and asked, “Shall we begin?”
On a nod, he pulled her toward him and set their bodies into motion. Her gaze remained resolutely fixed over his shoulder in the hope of foiling any attempt at small talk on his part. Her hope was immediately dashed.
“It is a strange sensation,” he began, “to have your body so completely in hand and, yet, the essence of you so far away.”
A shocked laugh escaped her. Words like body and essence could make a lady go speechless. They weren’t words used in polite circles, particularly in the way they’d crossed his lips, as if a promise was located somewhere inside.
Desperate to summon an upright ancestor or two, she said, “You know nothing of my body or my essence.”
“Would you rather I ask how you find the weather?”
Yes! she ached to shout at the dratted man. She wanted simple, and he wasn’t having it.
Further complicating the matter was an unruly desire to have the firm hand piously fixed to the middle of her ribcage slide down and settle on the curve of her hip. A simple contraction of muscle would close the remaining gap between them, and he could . . . what?
That wouldn’t do. It was possible his words—body, essence—had awakened a dormant desire within her. A desire so long unused she’d thought it entirely disappeared. Her mutinous body yearned to hear such words again.
“What is your scent, Lady Olivia? I detect lavender and . . . is that sandalwood?” She nodded, and he continued, “In my experience English ladies don’t smell of exotic spice. Rather they smell of—”
“Stale rosewater?” she finished for him.
A too-charming look of abashment crossed his features. “My apologies, it was intended as a compliment. You are a most unexpected Englishwoman.”
A surprising wave of pleasure unbalanced her, and she stumbled over her own feet. His fingers tightened protectively around her waist, holding her steady while she recovered herself. Lord St. Alban wasn’t the sort of man who let a woman fall.
She gave herself a mental shake and searched for the words that would right this dance before it went completely topsy-turvy on her. “Have you never heard of idle chit-chat, my lord?”
“I’ve never had much use for it,” he replied, the tilt to his mouth more wry than remorseful.
“Surely you can locate a middle ground somewhere. Here, let me help. I shall ask you a perfectly innocuous question that pertains to nothing personal in your life, and you will answer in kind.” Oh, why was she doing this? All this talk of the impersonal felt oddly personal. “Is this your first foray into the ton?”
He nodded. “My newfound duties as viscount have prevented me from enjoying the frivolities of Society until now.”
“We are nothing if not frivolous, my lord.” That was better, bodies, essences, and scents banished from the conversation. A pang of regret for their loss hadn’t flashed through her. Not at all. She almost believed it.
Lord St. Alban cocked his head. “Do I detect irony in your tone?”
“Irony? Careful, you’re skirting the edge of the personal again.” She pointed her gaze over his shoulder. The sooner this dance was done, the better.
“Could you tell me about the school the Dowager spoke of? It happens that my daughter is in need of a good one.”
“My sister and I founded a school for girls a few years ago. The Progressive School for Young Ladies and the Education of Their Minds.”
“A mouthful.”
“Yes, well, our headmistress, Mrs. Bloomquist, was adamant that the school’s mission be evident in its name.”
“So you aren’t involved in the daily running of the school?”
“No, but I am on the board of directors.”
“Ah, that makes more sense.”
“And what is that?” Olivia asked in her best imitation of Mrs. Bloomquist. Something in his tone told her she wasn’t going to appreciate the direction of this conversation.
“You don’t exactly strike me as the schoolmarm sort.”
“And why is that?” she shot back.
Slowly, with the heat of a thousand suns, his gaze raked over the curved length of her arm, across her clavicle, down toward the gently rounded mounds of her décolletage. A blush spread across her skin like wildfire. She tried to tell herself that it burned so hot due to justifiable outrage, but she suspected a different cause at its root, one it would do no good to dig up and examine.
From the last stronghold of her composure, she summoned a limp measure of righteous indignation. “And here I thought,” she croaked. She cleared her throat and began again. “I thought you were less of a nitwit than the others occupying this room. Appearances can, indeed, be deceiving.”
He pulled her close, and his lips feathered against her ear. “My apologies, if I implied your physical beauty and mental acumen are mutually exclusive entities. You might be the rare lady who possesses both.”
Her breath suspended in her chest. She might never breathe again.
She pulled back from him, hoping to encourage a measure of cool reason. But it was no use. Her focus was entirely concentrated on the points of contact between his hands and her body.
At last, a sliver of good sense came to her rescue, and she was able to say, “Let us finish this waltz and go our separate ways.”
He gave a curt nod of assent, and the arctic chill returned to his eyes. A sigh might have escaped him, even as they waltzed on, narrowly avoiding another couple.
What was happening to her? Not an hour ago, she’d been an ice queen, untouchable. Now rational thought was abandoning her, and all she could do was feel . . . The pressure of his fingers against her flesh, even through several layers of cloth . . . the rumble of his words from deep within his chest, even as his soft Dutch accent lent them a clipped quality . . . and, oh, the content of those words . . .
This wouldn’t do. She knew next to nothing about this man. Which didn’t matter, not in the least. She knew herself. She didn’t need, or desire, an entanglement with a man, particularly not with a man she met on a ballroom floor. She’d done that once, and it hadn’t ended well.
She hadn’t divorced one husband only to find another.
Her eyebrows crinkled together. Why had that conclusion come to her? She’d barely had ten minutes of conversation with this man.
But she knew why. The Right Honourable Jakob Radclyffe, Fifth Viscount St. Alban, was the sort of man a woman could marry.
But she wasn’t the sort of woman a gentleman married, not anymore. Not that she would; it was simple fact. Besides, she would never be wife to any man again. The bloom was off that particular rose.
With a sudden contraction of hardened muscle, he pulled her body into him to avoid yet another couple. The touch of his breath along the exposed line of her clavicle sent tiny bolts of lightning through her. Her gaze flew up to meet his, to see if he felt them, too. But his countenance remained aloof and stoic, giving nothing away.
Lord St. Alban aroused in her a reaction unlike any she’d ever experienced, not even with Percy. This feeling was dark and complex and mysterious like an underground cavern that wound round and round far below the surface. It insisted that he alone could illuminate its dark depths and satisfy this nascent ache . . .
She planted her feet, halting their swirling momentum and eliciting a few murmurs of displeasure from the couples who had to swerve to avoid them. Scandal be damned, she needed to leave this room. “My day begins quite early, my lord,” she said, her eyes refusing to meet his.
His hands dropped from her body as if singed, yet he made no other movement. No move to hold her in place or insist that she finish this waltz with him.
She inhaled the sigh of disappointment that wanted release and whirled around. Her feet kept pace with the rapid tattoo of her heart, leading her away from him . . . away from this room . . . away from this night. Lately, it felt as if she was ever fleeing one thing or another.
Well, in this case, there was no help for it. It was an absolute imperative that she flee Lord St. Alban. The man made her feel . . .
Well, he made her feel. And she had no use for feelings elicited by any man.
Determination steeled her as a pair of words swirled through her head: freedom, independence. No man would ever make her forget them again.
She must find a Mayfair townhouse posthaste. She couldn’t abide the possibility of Lord St. Alban arriving at the Duke’s manse for his viscount lessons. It was all too much, too fast.
Her footsteps trilled down the Dowager’s front door stoop and crisp night air hit her lungs. She snugged her shawl secure about her shoulders and allowed a footman to hand her up into her waiting carriage.
Tonight, she would lay her head on her pillow and dream this night away.
Tomorrow, she would awake clear-headed and her real life would proceed. That marriageable man and the unsettling confusions of emotion he provoked would be part of a future left behind and better unbegun.